Monday, November 21, 2011

Wishful thinking on the Left

— My paraphrase of this Clintonista op-ed in today's WSJ, which urges Obama to abandon his campaign so that the Dems can nominate his SecState as their 2012 presidential candidate "by acclamation." (So much for small-d democracy in the Democratic Party, eh?)

Actually, if they could just get Joe Biden, John Boehner, and Daniel Inouye to resign in series immediately after Obama did, then the Dems could run Hillary as the incumbent.

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Comments

Dear Mr. Dyer: Nope, just heave Biden out and nominate Hillary as the replacement veep under amendment 25. Said nominee needs to be confirmed by majority vote of BOTH houses---after hearings. Remember the hearing on Nelson Rockefeller's nomination? He had to bare all. So too, Ms. Hillary, which would give lots of opportunities to inquire about, oh, say the Libyan invasion, the maneuverings in Uganda, the 2000 Senate race, all the old Billyboy era scandals etc etc etc. And the dam liars in the press would have to cover this! This is why it won't happen, any more than the mass resignations.

This is the usual pre-election panic. The two pollsters, i.e. paid twisters, piously moan about Harry packing it in in1952 instead of running. They forget that Harry had had the bulk of two terms, and was on record as opposing third terms in 1940. The real historical precedent was the panicky "Dump Harry" attempt on 1947-48. Such wizards as the Roosevelt brothers howled that Harry should step down in favor of Eisenhower or even more grotesquely, William O. Douglas. Truman paid them no heed, and didn't panic. Nor did he panic when the masterminds Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond split away from the Dems and launched their own sideshows. No question about it, that 1947-48 period was a harrowing time for Truman, and the odds were against him. But he stuck to what he believed and came through.

Try to imagine The One having this steadiness and fortitude. All right, no need to laugh that hard, it's unseemly. But The One has a substitute: vanity. If any other Dem is the nominee, The One knws dam well that he will be the target of Democrat barrages as well as GOP ones. Even the liars in the press will turn on him, so they can help elect the Dem nominee. The One's vanity could not stomach that. I think if ever he resigns, it will be after he's defeated, but before his replacement is sworn in. He couldn't face being "President-reject" as TIME said Hoover was in 1932-33.

As for the Lyndon precedent, that's easily answered. The notion that LBJ could have been beaten at the nomination is ridiculously idiotic, despite Bobby Kennedy. You need only look at William Howard Taft in 1912, who was at least as unpopular as Johnson was in 1968, and faced T. Roosevelt, a far more formidable opponent than Bobby Kennedy ever was. Taft crushed TR in the nomination, just as LBJ would have crushed Kennedy in 1968. I think LBJ would have had a better than even shot at winning the election if he had done a somersault and said he would stop bombing Vietnam and get out. Sure the Right would have howled, but all the lefties who snarled at Lyndon in the spring would have voted for him (against Nixon and Wallace) in November. But Johnson was more than a bit of a bully, and couldn't take the "beating" he was taking from the Left. He was a hollow giant cowering against pygmy vermin.

Nope, this piece is by panic out of fraud, still more proof that pollsters are scoundrels out to bamboozle anyone if it'll bring them a buck.

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